Unredeemable
by settler
Summary: Dee knows that people envy her, and she even knows why, but she still thinks they've got it all wrong. KL if you squint.


**Unredeemable**

PG

Kara/Lee, kind of. Dee/Angst, kind of.

Set sometime in the middle of season 3.

Title taken from Eliot's "Burnt Norton"

_All time is unredeemable.  
What might have been is an abstraction  
Remaining a perpetual possibility  
Only in a world of speculation.  
What might have been and what has been  
Point to one end, which is always present.  
Footfalls echo in the memory  
Down the passage which we did not take  
Towards the door we never opened  
Into the rose-garden._

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_

Dee knows that people envy her. She even understands why. She's married to one of the highest ranking officers in the colonial fleet. Her life is a posh as life on a battlestar can be: private quarters, private bath, good food. She doesn't even have a dangerous job.

All she has to do is sit in the heart of the CIC and listen to other people face danger.

Sometimes she wishes she were out there with them. When she presses buttons, comm channels open. When they press buttons, enemies explode. She thinks that it would be nice to be a hero; to know without a doubt that you matter. She knows that without his wings, Lee lost his drive. She suspects that half the steel and fire that Starbuck is famous for would abandon her if she lost her bird.

That kind of power has never been Dee's to lose, and sometimes she can't help the bitterness that rises up at how unfair that is.

And then there are the other times, the times when she sits and listens to pilots dying. Sometimes there are screams, but more often it's simple silence. A voice is there, and then it's not, and nothing is for certain, and there's nothing she can do.

Dee knows that people envy her, and she even knows why, but she thinks that if they could hear what she hears, they'd change their minds.

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx _

Dee understands envy though, understands it very well, because it spikes through her every time she sees Starbuck and Apollo, fences mended, together again, ready to take on anything.

It's all backwards, because she's the one who's with Lee, and she's the one who should be smiling just because she's next to him, brightening whenever he enters a room, making him laugh just by the expressions on her face.

She doesn't know why the thought of Lee Adama no longer makes her smile. And she's not really clear on why he seems to enjoy being with his lead pilot more than he enjoys being with his wife. All she knows is that Starbuck is giving him something that he needs, something that Dee simply can't provide because she has no idea what it _is_.

She doesn't think that they're sleeping together.

In some ways it would be simpler if they were. She has this fantasy where she quits in a storm of righteous anger and finds a job on one of the civilian ships. Maybe she could get transferred to wherever Sam Anders ended up and they can bond over being the latest bit players in the Starbuck and Apollo saga.

But as things stand, she knows she'll never break off her marriage with Lee. Without the impetus that being a jilted lover would give her, she will continue on just as she is. She doesn't know why, but she knows that she will.

Some days she thinks that maybe it's the curiosity, the burning need to know what it is that Starbuck has that she doesn't, that keeps her here.

So she watches them together.

Watches from shadows as Kara and Lee repair her viper. As they huddle together between the wing and the wall and Kara finally tells him about Leoben and her months in captivity on New Caprica. About how she would kill him and how he would keep coming back. About all his drivel on destiny and God's plan.

Lee's heart is breaking for her, Dee can see it in those baby blues of his. He's clearly itching to hold Kara, make everything okay again, and clearly devastated because he can't. Things like that aren't repairable, and even Dee, who doesn't know Kara well, knows that trying to offer comfort when she's so on edge is likely to earn Lee a trip up to sickbay.

Kara finishes her story, and her fists are clenched and she's breathing hard, sitting on the hangar floor, trying to keep herself under control. Lee scoots closer to her and covers her hands with his own. It's a smart move: if she tries to lash out, he's already got an advantage, and it gives him a way to offer the comfort he so clearly wants to offer.

Starbuck gives him a look, one of those incredibly expressive Kara looks that manages to convey pain and humor at the same time, and it lets him know on no uncertain terms that she knows exactly what he's doing by grabbing her hands.

Lee, in turn, manages to look both concerned and sheepish at once. Then Kara sighs and rests her head on his shoulder and he kisses her hair softly and the look changes to one of pure affection.

"I love you," Kara says. Or at least, that's what Dee thinks she says. She mumbles it into the neck of Lee's uniform, so Dee can't be sure.

Lee's response is clear though. "No takebacks," he says promptly, and despite the teasing tone, Dee can tell that he means it.

Kara curls into him then, and he finally gets to hold her like he's wanted to since she started her story, or maybe since long before that.

Dee feels the familiar ache of envy in her gut. She can't imagine that this is what her shipmates feel when they look at her. It's much too heavy, too solid, to be the same emotion that colors the glances they throw her way.

Besides, she thinks, if her shipmates could see what she sees, those looks would turn into something much different.

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx _

She watches a while longer, but nothing else happens. Lee and Kara remain like that, tucked together between the wall and Starbuck's viper, everything Dee wants and can't have.

She looks away for a moment, and then, strangely enough, her mind is focused not on her husband and the woman in his arms, but on Kara's story and Leoben's ramblings about destiny.

She thinks that if there were one God controlling everything, he couldn't possibly have put her in a worse position.

And perhaps that's telling. Perhaps there is just one God. Dee has seen the way committees work, and she somehow can't imagine that a pantheon could have conspired to put her in this position.

Or perhaps its just that one particular god is out to get her; either that or out to champion Kara Thrace. Best fighter pilot in the fleet, loved by both remaining Adamas, and by one long-dead, if the rumours are to be believed. Yes, it's entirely possible that there's a god looking out for Kara Thrace.

It's probably Apollo.

And a god could definitely be punishing Dee. For brushing aside Billy, who had loved her enough to die for her. For not being a sorry as she should have been after he was dead.

She wonders sometimes if she's a cylon. If there was some sort of internal programming that made her leave Billy, if her closeness to the two Adama men is part of a careful plan.

Sometimes that thought is oddly comforting. If she's a cylon, then it's not her fault. If she's been programmed, then she's not responsible for not being hero material, for not being able to break off her relationship with Lee, for not having whatever it is that Starbuck has that draws him to her.

Of course, if she's a cylon, then it's only a matter of time before her enviable position in the fleet triggers some kind of switch that brings death and destruction to everyone she loves.

That night she dreams that she's been replaced, that she's locked away in a dark room, watching a programmed copy of herself go about her days.

There is no appreciable difference, except that when cylon-Dee spies on Lee and Kara, there's a malevolent glint in her eyes.

Yes, if people dreamed what she dreams, Dee is pretty sure they wouldn't envy her anymore. They'd be more likely to throw her out an airlock.

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx _

The dreams scare Dee for a different reason though. They scare her because there is part of her that cheers on her cylon self. A part of her that would love to get revenge. Revenge for all the things that she doesn't have but wants. All the things that Kara has been given instead of her.

And it scares Dee even more because when those thoughts fill her with remorse, she has a hard time asking forgiveness from the Lords of Kobol. Apologizing to a group seems too impersonal, too much like she's bringing her case before a jury. Pleading with one deity, pouring out her anguish and despair to an ultimate judge, feels so much more natural.

Leoben had spoken of salvation. And from what Kara had said, it didn't sound like a salvation for heroes.

She wants to know more.


End file.
